Introduction to Expenses

What are Expenses?

Expenses are the costs you incur in order to run your business. For a handmade business, material purchase and usage is one of the biggest costs so it is vital to track this accurately. By adding material expenses, you'll be able to automatically increase your material stock levels and track your exact unit costs.

Adding Expenses for Materials

There are many different ways that expenses can be added and utilised in Craftybase, however for the purposes of this tutorial we will be focusing on material expenses. We will also be assuming that the material already exists, so this will be an expense logged to restock a certain quantity of the material.

To get to your expenses form, the fastest way is to click on your + menu option in the top navigation bar and select the "Add Expense" menu option. This option is best if you have many different materials to enter from the same purchase.

Alternatively, to have an expense already populated with the material you are purchasing you can navigate to your material's detail page, then click on the Expenses tab and then the Add Expense button.

Now that we are on the expense form page, let's take a closer look:

The first field, Purchase Date is for the date that you purchased the items. You can either type a date here, or select from the calendar view.

The next field, Code, is an optional field that you can use for any numbers or codes that help you to identify the expense. This can be the code that the vendor provided to you, or can be your own. You can search via this code in your lists so it can be a good way to quickly locate your expenses.

The Vendor field is for adding information about the company you purchased your material from. This is an optional field, but it is useful for keeping complete purchase histories from your vendors. You can either use the search box to search through your existing vendors, or create a new vendor on this page by clicking the New Vendor link to the right of the box.

From here, let's move on to the expense items section of the form where you will enter your materials. Select the Add Expense Item button here and you will see a new window open. This is the Add Expense Item form: lets go through the fields on this page in a little more detail:

The Category selection allows you to select the expense category for this particular expense item. An expense can have many different line items and each line item can all have different categories.

You'll notice that the Materials option has been pre-selected for you: this is the category that you will use for any material purchases. If you wish to rename this category to better represent the way you categorise your material expenditure you can do so at any time via your settings pages. The Material category is the only one that will allow you to link directly to a material - if you switch this category to a different one, you'll notice that the material search box will disappear and other fields will appear.

As we are adding a Material Expense in this tutorial, we'll change it back to Material so that the fields we need appear once again.

The next field is to link your Material to this expense item: this is a search enabled box that allows to you find any Material in your list. If you have navigated to this page via a material record, you'll see that it will have been prepopulated for you with the material you wish to add an expense for. Otherwise, it will be blank ready for you to search to find a material that already exists in your material list.

Now onward to the Quantity and Cost fields. These allow you to define exactly how many you purchased of this item and how we should increase your inventory levels from this purchase.

If you have defined a Purchase Quantity for the Material, you will notice that you will see an extra box called Purchase Quantity here (if you don't see this, you might like to go back and add in a Purchase Quantity and Multiplier first). You don't need this, but it can be a really handy shortcut if you purchase in different units to the ones you manufacture in. The Purchase Quantity field essentially allows you to enter in the quantity in the purchase quantities you have defined - when you change this quantity, you'll see that the Tracking Qty box will update with the correct unit quantity you will be increasing.

You can choose to ignore the Purchase Quantity and instead enter the Tracking Quantity in directly if you have this information at the ready - in this case, your purchase quantity will adjust accordingly for you.

Your Unit Cost is the amount it costs to purchase a single unit in the tracking unit you have defined. Remember: this is not the purchase unit price. When you adjust the unit cost, you'll see that your Total Cost will be calculated automatically for you. Likewise, if you change the Total Cost you'll see that your Unit Cost will be recalculated. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility to enter in your purchases in a variety of different units and prices.

The next section immediately below your quantity and costs is your restocking advice: this shows you the total quantity that will be restocked into your inventory and how it will change your curerent stock on hand. You can choose to unselect the Received? checkbox: if the item is still on order, then uncheck this box and your stock will not yet be increased. When you do receive the item, edit the expense and then mark as received and your stock will be increased. You'll see this in action if you toggle this checkbox - the New Stock on Hand will recalculate to include and exclude the current expense quantity.

Finally, you'll see a small field for adding any notes you wish about the expense line item itself. Enter any notes you want to keep here, then click the Add Expense Item button to move this item into your Expense form.

You'll now see that you have an item under the Expense Items section with the details you have just filled out. You can make any last minute adjustments here if you like, or add another line item by clicking the Add Expense Item button.

Now that we have our material expense entered, let's move to the totals area.

The first row is your Item Total and is calculated from all items within the expense. As we only have the one item in this expense, this will be exactly the same as the item total. If you have multiple items in the expense then it will be the sum of all line item totals.

Next is a Discount textbox for you to enter any savings you have been given for this particular expense. This will be removed from your grand total for the expense and will be proportionally calculated for each of the items in your expense.

Tax and Shipping are on the following rows, and like the Discount field above they are proportionally calculated onto every expense line item. Tax and Shipping are added to your expense total.

The last row shows your Order Total which is your calculated using the following formula: Item Total - Discount + Tax + Shipping.

The next field is Notes and is for any additional details you wish to store about this expense.

The Paid? checkbox allows you to mark if an expense is still to be paid for - this will be displayed with the Paid / Unpaid flag on the Expenses list view.

Once you are happy with the details on the expense form, click the Save Expense button and you'll be returned to the material page. It is at this point that all inventory calculations will be made, so you'll now see your newly increased stock levels appear.

Video Walkthrough

Watch our video demonstration for this feature here: How to Add Material Expenses Video »

Have some questions?

If you have any additional questions, please get in touch and we'll be happy to give you a hand. Alternatively, feel free to join and post your question in our official Craftybase Facebook group.